JOEL KOVEL
(1936-2018)
R.I.P.
Joel Kovel : an appreciation
https://louisproyect.org/2018/05/02/joel-kovel-1936-2018-an-appreciation/
by Louis Proyect
Scholar and Activist Joel Kovel Dies at 81 in New York City
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/5/1/headlines/scholar_and_activist_joel_kovel_dies_at_81_in_new_york_city
In New York City, antiwar activist, author and professor
Joel Kovel has died at the age of 81. In the 1960s
and 1970s, Kovel was a well-known psychiatrist who
left the Albert Einstein Medical School out of his opposition to the corporate
influence over medicine. He became a prolific writer and scholar, who was also active in the movements against the Vietnam War and
nuclear proliferation. He was the author of more than 10 books about systemic
racism, ecology and global warming and other topics. Kovel
went on to run for the U.S. Senate in New York with the Green Party in 1998. He
also ran for U.S. president against Ralph Nader in the Green Party primary in
2000. This is Joel Kovel, speaking on Democracy Now! in 2007 after his book “Overcoming Zionism: Creating a
Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine” was temporarily dropped by the
University of Michigan, after it caused a controversy.
Joel Kovel served as a
professor in Psychiatry, Anthropology, Political Science, Social Studies and
Communications. He became editor-in-chief of
Capitalism Nature Socialism (http://www.cnsjournal.org/) and developed his distinctive approach, which draws
on both psychoanalysis and Marxism, across a wide range of publications. His
ten books include The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the
World? (2002), White Racism: A Psychohistory (1970) and Red Hunting in the
Promised Land: Anticommunism and the Making of America (1994). He was also a political activist and a media commentator.
Early
life
In 1936, Kovel
was born in Brooklyn, New York to an immigrant Jewish family. He
received his B.S. Summa cum laude from Yale
University in 1957. In 1961 he received his M.D. from the Columbia
University College of Physicians and Surgeons and in 1977 was a graduate of
the Psychoanalytic Institute, Downstate Medical Center Institute, Brooklyn, New York.[1]
Academic
career
From 1977 till 1983 he was Director
of Residency Training, Department of Psychiatry, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
(where he was also Professor of Psychiatry from 1979–1986). From 1980 to 1985,
he was an Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at the New School for Social Research and
from 1986–7 a Visiting Professor of Political Science and Communications, University of California, San Diego.
He also held short-term positions as a Visiting Lecturer at San Diego State University in the spring
of 1990 and another Visiting Professor position at UCSD in Winter
1993.[1]
In 1988, Kovel
was appointed Alger Hiss Chair of Social Studies, a non-tenured
position, at Bard College. In February 2009, he was informed that
his position would not be renewed after the contract ended on June 20, 2009 and
that he would be moved to "emeritus" status at that time.[2]
Kovel argued in a letter sent to the faculty of Bard
College that his contract was not renewed due to his political views.[3]
He reiterated his argument in a statement posted on his official website that
the "termination of service is prejudicial and motivated neither by
intellectual nor pedagogic considerations, but by political values, principally
stemming from differences between myself and the Bard administration on the
issue of Zionism".[2]
The college president, Leon Botstein, responded in a letter sent directly to
Kovel by arguing that his termination was not
political but part of a larger move by Bard to reduce part-time faculty.
Botstein stated: "To take what is self-evidently a result of economic
constraint and turn it into a trumped-up case of prejudice and political
victimization insults not only your intelligence but the intelligence of your
readers."[3]
While Kovel called his dismissal illegitimate and
vowed to fight the decision, he did leave Bard permanently per the university's
decision in 2009.
Kovel's works include White Racism (1971) (nominated for a
National Book Award), A Complete Guide to Therapy (1979), The Age of
Desire (1982), Against the State of Nuclear Terror (1982), In
Nicaragua (1986), The Radical Spirit: Essays on Psychoanalysis and
Society (1988), History and Spirit (1991), Red Hunting in the
Promised Land (1994), The Enemy of Nature (2002), and Overcoming
Zionism (2007). He is the Editor-In-Chief of Capitalism, Nature, Socialism.[1]
Political
activism and the Green Party
Kovel became involved in political activism in the 1960s as a
result of the Vietnam War. He began to study Marx
which created a "conflict with his identity as a Freudian
psychoanalyst" (he would eventually abandon medicine, psychiatry, and
psychoanalysis in 1985). He also worked in defense of the Sandinista revolution
in Nicaragua.[1]
By the late 1980s, he became
involved with the Environmental movement. He then had a brief
career with the Green Party of the US, under which he
ran for the U.S. Senate in 1998 and "sought the party’s presidential
nomination in Denver in 2000."[1]
Kovel was an advisory editor of Socialist Resistance.[4]
Eco-socialist
views
In 2001, Kovel
and Michael Löwy, an anthropologist
and member of the Trotskyist Fourth International,
released An ecosocialist manifesto. which set out to define eco-socialist
ideology.[5]
Critique
of capitalist expansion and globalisation
Kovel was anti-capitalist and anti-globalization, seeing globalization
as a force driven by capitalism – in turn, the rapid economic
growth encouraged by globalization causes acute ecological crises.[6]
He believed that capitalist firms have to continue to generate profit through a
combination of continually intensifying exploitation and selling to new
markets: this means that capitalism must grow indefinitely to exist, which
seems impossible on a planet of finite resources.[6]
In the Ecosocialist
manifesto, Kovel and Löwy suggest that capitalist expansion causes both
"crises of ecology" through "rampant industrialization"
and "societal breakdown" that springs "from the form of imperialism
known as globalization". They believe that capitalism's
expansion "exposes ecosystems" to pollutants,
habitat destruction and resource depletion, "reducing the sensuous
vitality of nature
to the cold exchangeability required for the accumulation of capital",
while submerging "the majority of the world's people to a mere reservoir
of labor power" as it penetrates communities
through "consumerism and depoliticization".[5]
Furthermore, Kovel sees the form of neo-liberal
globalization
as "a return to the pure logic of capital" that "has effectively
swept away measures which had inhibited capital’s aggressivity,
replacing them with naked exploitation of humanity and nature"; for Kovel, this "tearing down of boundaries", which
was "a deliberate response to a serious accumulation crisis" in the
1970s, has become the definition of modern 'globalization'.[7]
As eco-socialists disagree with the
elite theories of capitalism, which tend to label a specific class or social
group as conspirators who construct a system that satisfies their greed and
personal desires, Kovel suggests that the capitalist
system itself is self-perpetuating, fuelled by extra-human or impersonal
forces. He uses the Bhopal Union-Carbide industrial disaster as an
example. Many anti-corporation observers would blame the avarice of those at
the top of many multi-national corporations. Conversely, Kovel
traces systemic impulses. Union
Carbide were experiencing a decrease in sales that
led to falling profits, which, due to stock market conditions, translated into
a drop in share values. The depreciation of share value made many shareholders
sell their stock, weakening the company and leading to cost-cutting measures
that eroded the safety procedures and mechanisms at the Bhopal
site. Though this did not, in Kovel's mind, make Bhopal
inevitable, it illustrates the effect market forces can have on increasing the
likelihood of ecological and social problems.[6]
Use
and exchange value
Kovel follows Marx's theories about the contradiction between use values
and exchange values. As he explains in The Enemy of
Nature, within a market economy, goods are not produced to meet needs but
are produced to be exchanged for money that we then use to acquire other goods.
As we have to keep selling in order to keep buying, we must persuade others to
buy our goods just to ensure our survival, which leads to the production of
goods with no previous use that can be sold to sustain our ability to buy other
goods. Kovel stresses that this contradiction has
reached a destructive extent, where certain essential activities – such as
caring for relatives full-time and basic subsistence –
are unrewarded, while unnecessary economic activities earn certain individuals
huge fortunes.[6]
The
role of the state and transnational organisations
Capitalist expansion is seen by Kovel as being "hand in glove" with "corrupt
and subservient client states" that repress dissent against the
system, governed by international organisations
"under the overall supervision of the Western
powers and the superpower United States", which subordinate
peripheral nations economically and militarily.[5]
Kovel further claims that capitalism itself spurs
conflict and, ultimately, war. Kovel states that the 'War on
Terror', between Islamist extremists and the United States, is
caused by "oil imperialism", whereby the capitalist nations require
control over sources of energy, especially oil, which are necessary to continue
intensive industrial growth – in the quest for control of
such resources, Kovel argues that the capitalist
nations, specifically the United States, have come into conflict with the
predominantly Muslim
nations where oil is often found.[6]
Kovel believes that state or self-regulation of markets does not solve the
crisis "because to do so requires setting limits upon accumulation",
which is "unacceptable" for a growth-orientated
system; they believe that terrorism and revolutionary impulses cannot be tackled
properly "because to do so would mean abandoning the logic of empire".
Instead, eco-socialists feel that increasing repressive counter-terrorism
increases alienation and causes further terrorism
and believe that state counter-terrorist methods are, in Kovel and Löwy's words, "evolving
into a new and malignant variation of fascism".
They echo Rosa Luxemburg's "stark choice" between
"socialism or barbarism", which was believed to be a prediction of
the coming of fascism
and further forms of destructive capitalism at the beginning of the 20th
century (Luxemburg was in fact murdered by proto-fascist Freikorps in the revolutionary atmosphere of Germany in
1919).[5]
Critique
of other forms of green politics and socialism
Kovel criticises many within the Green
movement for not being overtly anti-capitalist,
for working within the existing capitalist,
statist
system, for voluntarism, or for reliance on technological
fixes. He suggests that eco-socialism
differs from Green politics at the most fundamental level because
the 'Four Pillars'
of Green politics (and the 'Ten Key Values' of the US Green Party) do not include the
demand for the emancipation of labour
and the end of the separation between producers and the means of production.[6]
Opposition
to within-system approaches, voluntarism and technological fixes
Kovel is highly critical of those Greens
who favour "working within the system".
While he recognises the ability of within-system
approaches to raise awareness, and believe that "the struggle for an ecologically
rational world must include a struggle for the state",
he believes that the mainstream Green
movement is too easily co-opted by the current powerful socio-political
forces as it "passes from citizen-based activism to
ponderous bureaucracies scuffling for 'a seat at the table'". For Kovel, capitalism is "happy to enlist" the Green
movement for "convenience", "control over popular
dissent" and "rationalization". He further attacks within-system
green initiatives like carbon trading, which he sees as a "capitalist
shell game" that turns pollution "into a fresh source of profit".[6]
In addition, Kovel criticises the "defeatism" of voluntarism in some local forms of environmentalism that do not connect: he suggests that they can be "drawn off into individualism" or co-opted to the demands of capitalism, as in the case of certain recycling projects, where citizens are "induced to provide free labor" to waste management industries who are involved in the "capitalization of nature". He labels the notion of voluntarism "ecopolitics
without struggle".[6]Kovel notes that "events in nature are reciprocal and
multi-determined" and can therefore not be predictably "fixed";
socially, technologies cannot solve social problems because they are not
"mechanical". He posits an analysis, developed from Marx, that patterns of production and social organisation
are more important then the forms of technology used
within a given configuration of society. Under capitalism, he suggests that
technology "has been the sine qua non of growth"
– thus he believes that, even in a world with hypothetical "free
energy", the effect would be to lower the cost of automobile
production, leading to the massive overproduction
of vehicles,
"collapsing infrastructure", chronic resource depletion and the "paving
over" of the "remainder of nature". In
the modern world, Kovel considers the supposed
efficiency of new post-industrial commodities is a "plain
illusion", as miniaturized components involve many substances and
are therefore non-recyclable (and, theoretically, only simple substances
could be retrieved by burning out-of-date equipment, releasing more pollutants).
He is quick to warn "environmental liberals"
against over-selling the virtues of renewable
energies that cannot meet the mass energy consumption of the era; although
he would still support renewable energy projects, he believes it is more
important to restructure societies to reduce energy use before relying on renewable
energy technologies alone.[6]
Critique
of Green economics
Kovel believes that eco-socialists must reject at a fundamental
level what he calls "ecological economics" or the
"ecological wing of mainstream economics" for being
"uninterested in social transformation". He furthers rejects the Neo-Smithian school, who believe in Adam Smith's
vision of "a capitalism of small producers, freely exchanging with each
other", which is self-regulating and competitive. The school is
represented by thinkers like David Korten who believe in "regulated markets"
checked by government
and civil
society but, for Kovel, they do not provide a
critique of the expansive nature of capitalism away from localised
production and ignore "questions of class,
gender or any
other category of domination". Kovel also criticises their "fairy-tale" view of history,
which refers to the abuse of "natural
capital" by the materialism of the Scientific Revolution, an assumption that, in
Kovel's eyes, seems to suggest that "nature had
toiled to put the gift of capital into human hands", rather than
capitalism being a product of social relations in human history.[6]
Other forms of Community-based economics are also
rejected by Kovel, including followers of E.
F. Schumacher and some members of the Cooperative movement, for advocating "no
more than a very halting and isolated first step". He thinks that their
principles are "only partially realizable within the institutions of cooperatives in capitalist society"
because "the internal cooperation" of cooperatives is "forever hemmed in and
compromised" by the need to expand value and compete within the market.
For Kovel, Community-based economics and Green Localism are "a fantasy" because
"strict localism belongs to the aboriginal stages of society" and
would be an "ecological nightmare at present population levels" due
to "heat losses from a multitude of dispersed sites, the squandering of
scarce resources, the needless reproduction of effort, and cultural
impoverishment". While he feels that small-scale production units are
"an essential part of the path towards an ecological society", he
sees them not as "an end in itself"; in his view, small enterprises
can be either capitalist or socialist in their configuration and therefore must be
"consistently anti-capitalist", through recognition and
support of the emancipation of labour, and exist
"in a dialectic with the whole of things", as human society will need
large-scale projects, such as transport infrastructures. He highlights the work
of leading ecological economist and steady-state theorist Herman
Daly, who exemplifies what eco-socialists see as the good and bad points of
ecological economics – while he offers a
critique of capitalism and a desire for "workers ownership", he only
believes in workers ownership "kept firmly within a capitalist
market", ignoring the eco-socialist desire for struggle in the
emancipation of labour and hoping that the interests
of labour and management today can be improved so
that they are "in harmony".[6]
Critique
of Deep Ecology
Kovel has attacked deep
ecology because, like other forms of Green politics and Green
economics, it features "virtuous souls" who have "no
internal connection with the critique of capitalism and the emancipation of
labor". He is particularly scathing about deep ecology and its
"fatuous pronouncement" that Green politics is "neither left nor
right, but ahead", which, for him, ignores the notion that "that
which does not confront the system becomes its instrument".[6]
Even more scathingly, Kovel suggests that in "its effort to decentre humanity within nature", deep ecologists can "go too far" and argue for the "splitting away of unwanted people", as evidenced by their desire to preserve wilderness by removing the groups that have lived there "from time immemorial". Kovel thinks that this lends legitimacy to "capitalist elites", like the US State Department and the World Bank, who can make preservation of wilderness a part of their projects that "have added value as sites for ecotourism" but remove people from their land. Between 1986 and 1996, Kovel notes that over three million people were displaced by "conservation projects"; in the making of the US National Parks, three hundred Shoshone Indians were killed in the development of Yosemite. Kovel believes that deep ecology has affected the rest of the Green movement and led to calls from restrictions on immigration, "often allying with reactionaries in a... cryptically racist quest". Indeed, he finds traces of deep ecology in the "biological reduction" of Nazism, an ideology many "organicist thinkers" have found appealing, including Herbert Gruhl, a founder of the German Green Party (who subsequently left when it became more Left-wing) and originator of the phrase "neither left nor right, but ahead". Kovel warns that, while 'ecofascism
' is confined to a narrow band of far right intellectuals and disaffected white power skinheads who involved themselves alongside far left groups in the anti-globalization movement, it may be "imposed as a revolution from above to install an authoritarian regime in order to preserve the main workings of the system" in times of crisis.[6]Critique
of bioregionalism
Bioregionalism,
a philosophy developed by writers like Kirkpatrick
Sale who believe in the self-sufficiency of "appropriate bioregional
boundaries" drawn up by inhabitants of "an area",[8]
has been critiqued by Kovel, who fears that the
"vagueness" of the area will lead to conflict and further boundaries
between communities.[6]
While Sale cites the bioregional
living of Native Americans,[8] Kovel notes that such ideas are impossible to translate to
populations of modern proportions, and evidences the fact that Native Americans held land in commons, rather
than private property – thus, for eco-socialists, bioregionalism
provides no understanding of what is needed to transform society, and what the
inevitable "response of the capitalist state"
would be to people constructing bioregionalism.[6]
Kovel also attacks the problems of self-sufficiency. Where Sale
believes in self-sufficient regions "each developing the energy of its
peculiar ecology", such as "wood in the northwest [USA]",[8] Kovel asks "how on earth" these can be made
sufficient for regional needs, and notes the environmental damage of converting
Seattle into
a "forest-destroying and smoke-spewing wood-burning" city. Kovel also questions Sale's
insistence on bioregions that do "not require connections with
the outside, but within strict limits", and whether this precludes
journeys to visit family members and other forms of travel.[6]
Critique
of variants of eco-feminism
Kovel acknowledges the importance of "the gendered bifurcation
of nature" and supports the emancipation of gender as it
"is at the root of patriarchy and class".
Nevertheless, while he believes that "any path out of capitalism must also
be eco-feminist", he criticises types of ecofeminism that are not anti-capitalist
and can "essentialize women's closeness to
nature and build from there, submerging history into nature", becoming
more at place in the "comforts of the New Age Growth
Centre". These limitations, for Kovel,
"keep ecofeminism from becoming a coherent
social movement".[6]
Critique
of Social Ecology
Though Kovel
recognises Social
Ecology as part of a similar radical tradition as eco-socialism,
he still distinguishes one from the other because Social Ecologists see
hierarchy "in-itself" as the cause of ecological
destruction, whereas eco-socialists focus on gender and class
domination embodied in capitalism and recognise that
forms of authority that are not "an expropriation of human power for...
self-aggrandizement", such as a student-teacher relationship that is
"reciprocal and mutual", are beneficial. In practice, Kovel describes Social Ecology as continuing the anarchist
tradition of non-violent direct action, which is
"necessary" but "not sufficient" because "it leaves
unspoken the question of building an ecological society beyond capital".
Furthermore, Social Ecologists and anarchists tend to focus on the state
alone, rather than the class relations behind state domination (in the view of Marxists).
Kovel fears that this is political, springing from
historic hostility to Marxism among anarchists and sectarianism, which he points
out as a fault of the "brilliant" but "dogmatic" founder of
Social Ecology, Murray Bookchin.[6]
Critique
of 'Actually Existing Socialisms'
For Kovel
and Lowy,
eco-socialism
is "the realization of the 'first-epoch' socialisms" by resurrecting
the notion of "free development of all producers", distancing
themselves from "the attenuated, reformist aims of social
democracy and the productivist structures of the
bureaucratic variations of
socialism", such as forms of Leninism and Stalinism.[5]
They ground the failure of past socialist
movements in "underdevelopment in the context of hostility by existing
capitalist powers", which led to "the denial of internal
democracy" and "emulation of capitalist productivism".[5]
Kovel believes that the forms of "actually
existing socialism" consisted of "public ownership of the means of production", rather than meeting
"the true definition" of socialism as "a free association of
producers", with the Party-State bureaucracy acting as the
"alienating substitute 'public'".[6]
In analysing
the Russian Revolution, Kovel
feels that "conspiratorial" revolutionary movements "cut off
from the development of society" will "find society an inert mass
requiring leadership from above". From this, he notes that the
anti-democratic Tsarist heritage meant that the Bolsheviks,
who were aided into power by World War One, were a minority who, when faced with a counter-revolution and invading Western
powers, continued "the extraordinary needs of 'war
communism'", which "put the seal of authoritarianism"
on the revolution; thus, for Kovel, Vladimir
Lenin and Leon Trotsky "resorted to terror", shut down
the Soviets (workers' councils) and emulated
"capitalist efficiency and productivism as a means of survival", setting the
stage for Stalinism.[6]
Lenin, in Kovel's eyes, came to oppose the nascent Bolshevik environmentalism
and its champion Aleksandr Bogdanov, who was later attacked for "idealism";
Kovel describes Lenin's philosophy as "a sharply
dualistic materialism, rather similar to the Cartesian
separation of matter and consciousness, and perfectly tooled... to the active
working over of the dead, dull matter by the human hand", which led him to
want to overcome Russian backwardness through rapid industrialization.
This tendency was, according to Kovel, augmented by a
desire to catch-up with the West
and the "severe crisis" of the revolution's first years.[6]
Furthermore, Kovel quotes Trotsky, who believed in a Communist
"superman" who would "learn how to move rivers and
mountains".[9]
Kovel believes that, in Joseph
Stalin's "revolution from above" and mass terror in response to
the early 1930s economic crisis, Trotsky's writings "were given official
imprimatur", despite the fact that Trotsky himself was eventually purged,
as Stalinism attacked "the very notion of ecology... in addition to
ecologies". Kovel adds that Stalin "would
win the gold medal for enmity to nature", and that, in the face of massive
environmental degradation, the inflexible
Soviet
bureaucracy became increasingly inefficient and unable to emulate capitalist
accumulation, leading to a "vicious cycle" that led to its collapse.[6]
Strategies
Kovel advocates the non-violent
dismantling of capitalism and the state,
focusing on collective ownership of the means of production by freely associated
producers and restoration of the Commons.[5]
Agency
Kovel focuses on working-class
involvement in the formation of eco-socialist parties or their increased
involvement in existing Green Parties; however, he believes that, unlike many
other forms of socialist analysis, "there is no privileged
agent" or revolutionary class,
and that there is potential for agency in numerous autonomous, grassroots
individuals and groups who can build "prefigurative"
projects for non-violent radical social change. He defines "prefiguration" as "the potential for the given to
contain the lineaments of what is to be", meaning that "a moment
toward the future exists embedded in every point of the social organism where a
need arises". If "everything has prefigurative
potential", Kovel notes that forms of potential ecological
production will be "scattered", and thus suggests that "the task
is to free them and connect them". While all "human ecosystems"
have "ecosocialist potential", Kovel points out that ones such as the World Bank
have low potential, whereas internally democratic anti-globalization "affinity groups"
have a high potential through a dialectic that involves the "active
bringing and holding together of negations", such as the group acting as
an alternative institution ("production of an ecological/socialist
alternative") and trying to shut down a G8 summit meeting
("resistance to capital"). Therefore, "practices that in the
same motion enhance use-values and diminish exchange-values
are the ideal" for eco-socialists.[6]
Prefiguration
For Kovel,
the main prefigurative steps "are that people
ruthlessly criticize the capitalist system... and that they include in this a
consistent attack on the widespread belief that there can be no alternative to
it", which will then "deligitimate the
system and release people into struggle". Kovel
justifies this by stating that "radical criticism of the given... can be a
material force", even without an alternative, "because it can seize
the mind of the masses of people", leading to "dynamic" and
"exponential", rather than "incremental" and
"linear", victories that spread rapidly. Following this, he advocates
the expansion of the dialectical eco-socialist potential of groups through
sustaining the confrontation and internal cohesion of human
ecosystems, leading to an "activation" of potentials in others
that will "spread across the whole social field" as "a new set
of orienting principles" that define an ideology or
"'party-life' formation".[6]
In the
short-term, Kovel advocates activities that have the
“promise of breaking down the commodity form”. This includes organizing labor, which is a “reconfiguring
of the use-value
of labor power”; forming cooperatives, allowing “a relatively free association of
labor”; forming localised currencies, which he sees
as “undercutting the value-basis of money”; and supporting “radical media”
that, in his eyes, involve an “undoing of the fetishism of commodities”. He
advocates economic localisation in the same vein as
many in the Green movement, although only as a prefigurative step rather than an end in itself. He also
advises political parties attempting to “democratize the state”
that there should be “dialogue but no compromise” with established political
parties, and that there must be “a continual association of electoral work with
movement work” to avoid “being sucked back into the system”. Such parties, he
believes, should focus on “the local rungs of the political system” first,
before running national campaigns that “challenge the existing system by the
elementary means of exposing its broken promises”.[6]
Kovel believes in building prefigurations
around forms of production based on use values,
which will provide a practical vision of a post-capitalist,
post-statist
system. Such projects include Indymedia ("a democratic
rendering of the use-values of new technologies such as the Internet, and
a continual involvement in wider struggle"), open-source software, Wikipedia, public
libraries and many other initiatives, especially those developed within the
anti-globalisation
movement.[6]
Internationalization
of prefiguration and the 'Eco-socialist Party'
Kovel believes that examples like the Christian
Bruderhof Communities
(despite elements of patriarchy that he attacks) show that
"communistic" organizations can "survive rather well in a
heavily industrialized market" if they are "protected" from the
dependence on the market by "anti-capitalist
intentionality".[10] He
further posits that class struggle is "internationalized in the
face of globalization", as evidenced by a wave of strikes
across the Global South in the first half of the year 2000;
indeed, he says that "labor's most cherished values are already immanently
ecocentric". Kovel
therefore thinks that these universalizing tendencies must lead to the
formation of "a consciously 'Ecosocialist
Party'" that is neither like a parliamentary or vanguardist
party. Instead, Kovel advocates a form of political
party "grounded in communities of resistance", where delegates
from these communities form the core of the party's activists, and these
delegates and the "open and transparent" assembly they form are
subject to recall and regular rotation of members. He holds up
the Zapatista Army of National
Liberation (EZLN) and the Gaviotas movement as examples of
such communities, which "are produced outside capitalist circuits"
and show that "there can be no single way valid for all peoples".
Nonetheless, he also firmly believes in connecting these movements, stating
that "ecosocialism will be international or it
will be nothing" and hoping that the Ecosocialist
Party can retain the autonomy of local communities while supporting them
materially. With an ever-expanding party, Kovel hopes
that "defections" by capitalists will occur, leading eventually to
the armed
forces and police
who, in joining the revolution, will signify that "the turning point is
reached".[6]
Eco-socialist
revolution
Kovel uses the term “Eco-socialist revolution” to describe the
transition to an eco-socialist world society. In the immediate socio-political
transition, he believes that four groups will emerge from the revolution –
revolutionaries, those “whose productive activity is directly compatible with ecological
production” (such as nurses, schoolteachers, librarians, independent farmers
and many other examples), those “whose pre-revolutionary practice was given
over to capital” (including the bourgeoisie,
advertising executives and more) and “the workers whose activity added surplus
value to capitalist commodities”. In terms of political organisation,
he advocates an “interim assembly” made up of the revolutionaries that can “devise
incentives to make sure that vital functions are maintained” (such as
short-term continuation of “differential remuneration” for labor), “handle the
redistribution of social roles and assets”, convene “in widespread locations”,
and send delegates to regional, state, national and international organisations, where every level has an “executive council”
that is rotated and can be recalled. From there, he asserts that “productive
communities” will “form the political as well as economic unit of society” and
“organize others” to make a transition to eco-socialist production; he adds
that people will be allowed to be members of any community they choose with
“associate membership” of others, such as a doctor
having main membership of healthcare communities as a doctor and
associate membership of child-rearing communities as a father. Each locality
would, in Kovel’s eyes, require one community that
administered the areas of jurisdiction through an elected assembly. High-level
assemblies would have additional “supervisory” roles over localities to monitor
the development of ecosystemic integrity, and
administer “society-wide services” like transport in “state-like functions”,
before the interim assembly can transfer responsibilities to “the level of the
society as a whole through appropriate and democratically responsive
committees”.[6]
Transnational
trade and capital reform
Part of the eco-socialist
transition, in Kovel’s eyes, is the reforming money to retain its
use in “enabling exchanges” while reducing its functions as “a commodity in its
own right” and “repository of value”. He argues for directing money to
“enhancement of use-values” through a “subsidization of use-values”
that “preserves the functioning core of the economy while gaining time and
space for rebuilding it”. Internationally, he believes in the immediate
cessation of speculation in currencies
(“breaking down the function of money as commodity, and redirecting funds on use-values”),
the cancellation of the debt of the Global
South (“breaking the back of the value function” of money) and the
redirecting the “vast reservoir of mainly phony value” to reparations and
“ecologically sound development”. He suggests the end of military aid and other
forms of support to “comprador elites in the South”
will eventually “lead to their collapse”.[6]
In terms of trade, Kovel advocates a ‘World People’s Trade Organization’
(WPTO), “responsible to a confederation of popular bodies”, in which “the
degree of control over trade is... proportional to involvement with production”,
meaning that “farmers would have a special say over food trade” and so on. He
posits that the WPTO should have an elected council that will oversee a reform
of prices in favour of an ‘Ecological Price’ (EP)
“determined by the difference between actual use-values
and fully realized ones”, thus having low tariffs for forms
of ecological production like organic agriculture; he also envisages the high
tariffs on
non-ecological production providing subsidies to ecological production units.
The EP would also internalize the costs of current externalities
(like pollution)
and “would be set as a function of the distance traded”, reducing the effects
of long-distance transport like carbon
emissions and increased packaging of goods. He thinks that this will provide a
“standard of transformation” for non-ecological industries, like the automobile industry, thus spurring changes
towards ecological production.[6]
Ecological
production
Kovel pursues "ecological
production" that goes beyond the socialist
vision of the emancipation of labor to "the realization of use-values
and the appropriation of intrinsic value". He envisions a form of
production in which "the making of a thing becomes part of the thing
made" so that, using a high quality meal as an analogy, "pleasure
would obtain for the cooking of the meal" – thus activities "reserved
as hobbies under capitalism" would "compose the fabric of everyday
life" under eco-socialism. This, for Kovel, is
achieved if labor is "freely chosen and developed... with a fully realized
use-value"
achieved by a "negation" of exchange-value,
and he exemplifies the Food Not Bombs project for adopting this. He
believes that the notion of "mutual recognition... for the process as well
as the product" will avoid exploitation and hierarchy.
With production allowing humanity to "live more directly and receptively
embedded in nature",
Kovel predicts that "a reorientation of human
need" will occur that recognises ecological
limits and sees technology as "fully participant in the life of eco-systems",
thus removing it from profit-making exercises.[6]
In the course on an Eco-socialist
revolution, Kovel advocates the “rapid conversion to ecosocialist production” for all enterprises, followed by
“restoring ecosystemic integrity to the workplace” through steps
like workers ownership. He then believes that the new enterprises can build
“socially developed plans” of production for societal needs, such as efficient
light-rail transport components. At the same time, Kovel
argues for the transformation of essential but, under capitalism,
non-productive labour, such as child care, into
productive labour, “thereby giving reproductive labour a status equivalent to productive labour”. During such a transition, he believes that income
should be guaranteed and that money will still be used under “new conditions of
value… according to use and to the degree to which ecosystem integrity is
developed and advanced by any particular production”. Within this structure, Kovel asserts that markets will become unnecessary –
although “market phenomena” in personal exchanges and other small instances
might be adopted – and communities and elected assemblies will democratically
decide on the allocation of resources.[6]
Kovel is quick to assert that the focus on “production” does not
mean that there will be an increase in production and labor under
Eco-socialism. He thinks that the emancipation of labor and the realization of use-value
will allow “the spheres of work and culture to be reintegrated”. He cites the
example of Paraguayan Indian communities (organised
by Jesuits)
in the 18th century who made sure that all community members learned musical
instruments, and had labourers take musical
instruments to the fields and takes turns playing music or harvesting.[6]
Commons,
property and ‘usufruct’
Kovel focuses on a modified version of the notion of ‘Usufruct’ to
replace capitalist private property arrangements. As a legal term, Usufruct
refers to the legal right to use and derive profit or benefit from property that
belongs to another person, as long as the property is not damaged. According to
Kovel, a modern interpretation of the idea is “where
one uses, enjoys – and through that, improves – another’s property”, as its Latin etymology
“condenses the two meanings of use – as in use-value,
and enjoyment – and as in the gratification expressed in freely associated labour”. The idea, according to Kovel,
has roots in the Code of Hammurabi and was first mentioned in Roman law
“where it applied to ambiguities between masters and slaves with respect to
property”; it also features in Islamic Sharia law, Aztec law and the Napoleonic
Code.[6]
Kovel highlights the fact that Marx mentioned the idea when he stated that human beings are no more than the planet’s “usufructaries
, and, like boni patres familias, they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition”.[11] Kovel has taken on this reading, asserting that, in an eco-socialist society, “everyone will have... rights of use and ownership over those means of production necessary to express the creativity of human nature”, namely “a place of one’s own” to decorate to personal taste, some personal possessions, the body and its attendant sexual and reproductive rights. However, Kovel sees property as “self-contradictory” because individuals emerge “in a tissue of social relations” and “nested circles”, with the self at the centre and extended circles where “issues of sharing arise from early childhood on”. He believes that “the full self is enhanced more by giving than by taking” and that eco-socialism is realized when material possessions weigh “lightly” upon the self – thus restoration of use-value allows things to be taken “concretely and sensuously” but “lightly, since things are enjoyed for themselves and not as buttresses for a shaky ego”. This, for Kovel, reverses what Marxists see as the commodity fetishism and atomization of individuals (through the “unappeasable craving” for “having and excluding others from having”) under capitalism. Under eco-socialism, he therefore believes that enhancement of use-value will lead to differentiated ownership between the individual and the collective, where there are “distinct limits on the amount of property individuals control” and no-one can take control of resources that “would permit the alienation of means of production from another”. He then hopes that the “hubris” of the notion of “ownership of the planet” will be replaced with usufruct.[6]Non-violence
Kovel asserts that "violence is the rupturing of ecosystems"
and is therefore "deeply contrary to ecosocialist
values". He believes that revolutionary movements must prepare for
post-revolutionary violence from counter-revolutionary sources by "prior
development of the democratic sphere" within the movement, because
"to the degree that people are capable of self-government, so will they
turn away from violence and retribution" for "a self-governed people
cannot be pushed around by any alien government". It is therefore
essential, in Kovel's view, that the revolution
"takes place in" or spreads quickly to the United States, which
"is capital's gendarme and will crush any serious threat", and that
revolutionaries reject the death penalty and retribution against former
opponents or counter-revolutionaries.[6]
Criticism
Writing in Capitalism Nature Socialism, Doug Boucher, Peter Caplan, David Schwartzman and Jane Zara criticise eco-socialists in general (and Kovel in particular) for a deterministic "catastrophism
" that overlooks "the countervailing tendencies of both popular struggles and the efforts of capitalist governments to rationalize the system" and the "accomplishments of the labor movement" that "demonstrate that despite the interests and desires of capitalists, progress toward social justice is possible". They argue that an ecological socialism must be "built on hope, not fear".[12]Controversies
Main article: University of Michigan Press
§ Controversies
In June 2008, The University of
Michigan Press severed ties with the British independent publishing firm, Pluto
Press for which it served as the American distributor.[13][14][15]
The decision came after a series of events tied to the distribution of Kovel's 2007 book Overcoming Zionism which argues
"that the creation of Israel was a mistake and urges adoption of the
"one state" solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which
Israelis and Palestinians would form a new country, without a Jewish
character."[16]
According to University Spokeswoman Kelly Cunningham, The University of
Michigan Press stopped distributing the book in the Fall
of 2007, after "serious questions" were raised about the book by
"members of the university community."[16]
Later in September, The University of Michigan Press announced that it would
resume distribution of Overcoming Zionism after receiving complaints
that it was conducting censorship.[17]
The Executive Board of The University of Michigan Press asserted in a statement
that though it, "has deep reservations about Overcoming Zionism, it
would be a blow against free speech to remove the book from distribution on
that basis. We conclude that we should not fail to honor our distribution
agreement based on our reservations about the content of a single book. Such a
course raises both First Amendment issues and concerns about the appearance of
censorship. As members of the university community dedicated to academic
freedom and open debate among differing views, the Executive Board stands
firmly for freedom of expression, and against even the appearance of
censorship. In this instance, both legal and value considerations lead us to the
decision to resume distribution of the book."[17]
At the same time, The University of Michigan Press also stated that, "had
the manuscript gone through the standard review process used by the University
of Michigan Press, the board would not have recommended publication. But the
arrangement with Pluto Press is for distribution only; the UM Press never
intended to review individually every title published by Pluto (or any other
press for which it holds distribution rights). By resuming distribution, the
board in no way endorses the content of the book."[17]
Death
On May 1, 2018, the news program Democracy
Now! announced that Kovel
had died in New York City on Monday, April 30 at the age of 81. No cause of
death was given.[18]
Selected
publications and interviews
References
· "Joel
Kovel". Environment and
Ecology. environment-ecology.com. Retrieved
March 19, 2017.
· · Kovel,
Joel. "Statement of Joel Kovel Regarding
His Termination from Bard College". joelkovel.com. Retrieved 2012-08-08.
· · Jaschik,
scott (2009-02-19). "Anti-Israel
Prof Loses Post at Bard". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved 2012-08-08.
· · "About :
Socialist Resistance: Fourth International in Britain:". Socialist Resistance. Archived from the original on
2009-02-08. Retrieved 2009-11-04.
· · Kovel,
J.; Löwy, M. (2001). An ecosocialist manifesto.
· · Kovel,
J., The Enemy of Nature, 2002.
· · Joel
Kovel: Why Ecosocialism
Today?
·
·
Sale, K., 'Principle of Bioregionalism', in Goldsmith, E., and Mander, J. (eds),The Case
against the Global Economy, Sierra Club Books (San Francisco, CA), 1996
· · Trotsky, L., Literature
and Revolution, 1924
· · "Life
Among The Bruderhof". The
American Conservative. Retrieved 2017-05-25.
· · Marx, K., Capital
Vol. 3., 1894
· · Capitalism
Nature Socialism September 2003 – Another look at the end of the world
Archived
January 12, 2013, at Archive.is
· · Jaschik,
Scott (2008-06-18). "Michigan
Severs Ties to Controversial Publisher". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved 2012-08-08.
· · Kroll, Andy
(2008-01-23). "Under
fire, 'U' Press changes guidelines". The Michigan Daily. Retrieved 2012-08-08.
· · "The University of
Michigan Press: Distributed Clients". University of Michigan
Press. Retrieved
2012-08-08.
· · Jaschik,
Scott (2007-09-11). "A Book on Hold". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved 2012-08-08.
· · Jaschik,
Scott (2007-09-12). "Michigan Resumes Distribution of Anti-Israel Book". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved 2012-08-08.
·
"Scholar
and Activist Joel Kovel Dies at 81 in New York
City". Democracy Now!. 1 May 2018. Retrieved 1 May 2018.
_____________
(Source of information : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Kovel)
_________
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